The viewership race between Monday Night Football and the World Series may qualify as too close to call.
The latest edition of NFL Monday Night Football (Giants-Steelers) averaged a 7.3 rating and 13.34 million viewers across ABC, ESPN and ESPN2, edging the competing Game 3 of the Dodgers-Yankees World Series on FOX, which drew a 6.6 and 13.21 million. On that Nielsen-only, English-language basis, the NFL came out ahead.
Including streaming and Spanish-language viewership, the World Series had 13.6 million — topping 13.4 million for MNF.
The narrow margin is a marked shift from last year, when MNF (8.5, 15.21M) nearly doubled Game 3 of the Rangers-Diamondbacks World Series (4.2, 8.13M). MNF declined 14% in ratings and 12% in viewership respectively from last year, while the World Series increased 57% and 63% respectively.
Both events took a hit from the head-to-head, with viewership hitting a season-low for MNF — not counting weeks when ABC and ESPN aired competing doubleheaders — and a series-low for Dodgers-Yankees.
Yet the World Series took more wind out of the NFL’s sails than the other way around. Giants-Steelers was the least-watched MNF game to air on both ABC and ESPN, while Dodgers-Yankees was still the most-watched World Series Game 3 in six years. The Dodgers’ win, which peaked with 14.25 million viewers in the 9 PM ET quarter-hour, also delivered the fifth-largest World Series audience of any kind since 2019, behind Games 1 and 2 of this year’s series and Games 5 and 6 in 2021.
The NFL has now topped the World Series head-to-head in six of the past seven years, the lone exception coming two years ago — when Astros-Phillies Game 5 trounced Eagles-Texans on Amazon Prime Thursday Night Football. The World Series was originally scheduled to face Monday Night Football that year, but the schedule was pushed back a day due to rain.
The World Series drew a series-high 20.0 rating and 52 share in Los Angeles, while New York turned in an 11.6/29. Ratings for the Giants game in New York were not immediately available.
